The Things That Anthony Shadid Taught Me
The Things That Anthony Shadid Taught Me
Travels and conversations with the irreplaceable friend and writer, who died from an asthma attack while reporting in Syria.
Thanassis Cambanis
The Atlantic
Anthony Shadid never seemed to be in a hurry. If you needed him, or simply wanted his company, he would linger to chat and fix you with a gaze that defined undivided attention. He gave the impression that nothing was more important to him than whomever he happened to be speaking to, even if he had a dozen deadlines. His hospitable nature blended seamlessly with Levantine mores, but I think it originated in equal measure from his origins in Lebanon, in Oklahoma, and in his entirely exceptional soul.
Often, I was scared when I was with Anthony. He reassured in the most primal manner, by example. The day after Saddam Hussein fled Baghdad, hundreds of journalists, Iraqi fortune seekers, and U.S. Marines thronged the front lot of the Palestine Hotel. In a panic, I found Anthony in his room upstairs, surrounded by stacks of bottled water. "You have time for a coffee?" he inquired, as if I were the busy one, as if time were limitless. Around him, in a way, it was. The more he slowed things down in the minute, the more minutes he seemed to pack into a day. He connected with so many of us -- artists, political activists, militiamen, families, working people, fellow journalists, heads of state -- and each of us felt that we had shared something alone with Anthony. And we had. That bounty was one of his many gifts.
On Christmas eve in 2003, we drove into Baghdad together. His first marriage was failing, and he spent that long night in Iraq's western desert speaking of his daughter, Laila, and of the Iraq story, both of which he loved in different ways. He felt ineluctably that he could not leave that story at a crucial time. It was a commitment shouldered without arrogance but with a clear -- and in my opinion, correct -- assessment that if he didn't tell the stories he was telling, no one would.
That commitment awed and inspired us all. Readers saw it in his dispatches from Iraq over more than a decade. Colleagues saw it in Iraq, Lebanon, the West Bank, Libya, and countless other places. He was devoted to better coverage of the Arab world. He lived that devotion in his own writing, about which nothing need be said because it so authoritatively speaks for itself, but also in the countless invisible acts he did to make the work of others better. He shared contacts with novice reporters he just had met. He took hours to mentor strangers and friends alike, about brief dispatches or sprawling book projects. He was the least selfish reporter I ever met, and he was the one who had the most to share, which he did compulsively.
The rest:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/the-things-that-anthony-shadid-taught-me/253254/
